Your fingerprint is your fingerprint, even if you’re not among the living.
A new report released on Thursday revealed that U.S. law enforcement agencies have indeed used the fingers of corpses to unlock iPhones and obtain evidence.
These efforts are said to date back to November 2016, when the FBI attempted to use the finger of Ohio State University attacker Abdul Razak Ali Artan to unlock his iPhone 5s, according to FBI forensics specialist Bob Moledor. That didn’t work, since by the time legal authority had been obtained, Touch ID was disabled without re-entering a passcode. Data was later retrieved with the help of a forensics lab.
Anonymous sources described as “close to local and federal police investigations” in New York and Ohio stated that it has now become common practice to use the fingers of dead bodies to try to unlock iOS devices, as seen in overdose cases where a device may contain information that can lead to arrests. At least some attempts have proven successful.
As of now, U.S. law allows for iPhones to be unlocked with the fingerprints of their deceased owners without obtaining a warrant.
Courts have ruled back and forth on the legal issues surrounding Touch ID. The topic of dead bodies came to the forefront with last year’s Sutherland Springs massacre, since police could conceivably have used the shooter’s fingers to gain access to his iPhone during a critical 48-hour window.
It’s unknown whether law enforcement has tried to unlock an iPhone X using Face ID and the face of its deceased owner or how feasible this technique might be.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via AppleInsider and Forbes